This piece is a lamentation on the campus politics of Ashoka University,and a meditation on the future of private universities in India.
Ashoka, a private university in Haryana, was founded with a pool of investment from several different individuals so as not to be beholden to a single founder’s whims. It now seems that it is beholden to all their whims. As an alumna of its undergraduate programme, I am upset by Ashoka’s recent trajectory. A helpful article by an undergraduate traces the university’s sordid history with academic freedoms; the most recent event leading to the resignations of faculty members Sabyasachi Das and Pulapre Balakrishnan in the economics department.
A closer look at the article shows how thin the commitment, if any at all, to academic freedom truly is at Ashoka, with the university leadership repeatedly making hurried and obsequious attempts to detract attention and allay concerns of political “radicalism”. Ashoka’s flagship undergraduate programme is less than 10 years old, and it seems, to the founders’ dismay, that the issue of academic freedom rears its ugly head every few years. This leads one to believe that these events are not mere aberrations in the daily workings of the university but fundamental issues in its very constitution. Without concrete changes one can expect it to occur again, and again.
One then might ask, where do these issues arise?
A September 5 tweet by university founder Sanjeev Bhikchandani is revealing.
“No matter how much Ashoka boasts about its left liberal values, but at the end of the day it is a capitalist institute…It cannot produce Bhagat Singhs or Umar Khalids.”
While I admire Bhagat Singh, as a parent do I want my son to go to the gallows at…
— Sanjeev Bikhchandani (@sbikh) September 5, 2023
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In response to an article on Newslaundry which characterises the university’s politics as “boring”, he claims it is a relief that Ashoka University will produce no Bhagat Singhs. This reply is interesting because his immediate response is to place himself in the shoes of Bhagat Singh’s parents. To even picture himself as Singh, a radical who defied cruel authority, seems an unimaginable prospect. And while his ideal intellectual environment would produce no Bhagat Singhs, it seems the oppressive politics that creates figures like Bhagat Singh deserves no mention either.
The erasure of Umar Khalid in his response, despite Khalid being mentioned in the original quote, speaks to this as well. The Bhagat Singh analogy might exhaust itself, but the comparison of protests against unfair administrative practices to a revolutionary who was active during colonial rule screams of reactionary paranoia.
More than two years ago, a beloved teacher of mine, Professor Pratap B. Mehta was forced to resign from Ashoka. That entire episode exhibited the timidity and inadequate imagination of Indian capital in the administration of a university in the face of political pressure. Since then, Ashoka’s priorities as an institution will probably best serve as examples in ‘How to Suffocate the Spirit of Inquiry’ manuals. Exemplified in its emphatic promotion of “apolitical” disciplines such as STEM and the depletion of senior and founding faculty in the social sciences – Mehta’s notice was accompanied by the departure of other professors such as Arvind Subramaniam and Neelanjan Sircar. These steps are not unique to India, they only mirror those taken in universities in Turkey and Singapore to placate political overlords. But what kind of students does such a place produce?
Also read: Intelligence Bureau at Ashoka University, Wants to Probe ‘Democratic Backsliding’ Paper
As an Indian Muslim, I am not naive to the current political environment. Dissent is costly and tough, and universities, beginning with JNU, have been battered over the last few years. Private universities are not nearly as threatened as public ones, yet the steps taken by Ashoka leadership to distance themselves and disavow private opinions and investigations is alarming. One can only expect a chilling effect to ensue, where if the work produced does not follow the administrative “party line” its producer’s future at the university is tenuous. This diminishes Ashoka’s prospects of being a research-oriented university and a space supportive of pioneering work.
However, perhaps most infuriating is the confusion between “left liberal” values and academic freedoms. For reasons unstated, Ashoka’s founders seem to believe that the protection of faculty is akin to becoming a hub of radical leftist politics. Instead, to be “boring” is preferable and to cherish political “neutrality” over more stated political commitments is valuable. But such neutrality often conceals a refusal to question authority, and approaching the social sciences and humanities with such an attitude leads to an impoverished education. Private universities in India are funded by wealthy donors who seek to contribute to the public good, notwithstanding that they must now comprehend the responsibility that such a decision accompanies. A university thrives from trusting its students and faculty, not by treating them in a parental or managerial fashion. Muzzling independent thought is a surefire route to diminishing one’s standing as a university to that of a vocational school.
I could be criticised for being too preoccupied with the mindset of the university leadership. That would be true. And while the temerity exhibited by the students and faculty in the face of an unflinching and Kafkaesque administration is commendable, it is not their actions that are depleting a demanding, intellectual environment I once called home. Until Ashoka sheds its corporatised approach to education, it will not harbour any credible commitment to academic excellence or freedom.
Zainab Firdausi was an undergraduate at Ashoka University from 2016-2020. She is currently a PhD student at Yale University.
